AI will change how people interact with all sorts of devices, [GM's VP of Strategy Mike] Abelson said, and voice interfaces "will feel a lot more like Star Trek really quickly." [Diveplane CEO Michael] Capps said he's more afraid of the Twilight Zone. "A black box scares the hell out of me," he said, and to that end he is working on "understandable AI."

While the company’s new, the technology behind the Raleigh artificial-intelligence start-up Diveplane Corp. has been under development for about seven years, CEO Mike Capps says. Diveplane is essentially a spinoff of Hazardous Software, a firm founded in 2007 that has since done “a mix of classified and unclassified work,” says Capps, the former head of Epic Games in Cary.

Mike Capps, the former president of Epic Games, retired six years ago to focus on his family. But yesterday he announced that he has cofounded a new business, Diveplane, that aims to use artificial intelligence for the benefit of humans by making the AI understandable, accurate, safer, and more easily double checked by humans. “We want to keep the humanity in AI,” said Capps in an interview with VentureBeat.

Before cutting edge technologies like self-driving cars become mainstream, companies and researchers must ensure that they can audit and inspect the underlying artificial intelligence technologies. That’s one of the takeaways from a panel at Fortune’s annual Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colo. about AI’s impact on humanity.

Ray Gronberg reports Mike Capps is heading a new company that is attempting to develop “the world’s first understandable AI system.” The article notes Diveplane has more than 15 employees, has raised $3.5 million and has launched a dozen pilot projects in fields ranging from venture-capital “decision support” to agriculture science to drone training.